Long Island Fire Siren Knowledge Base

Incase you didn't know.......

Why are fire department Sirens & Horns so important to you and your community?

1) The Obvious: Aside from the most obvious reason like alerting emergency personnel of an alarm. The sirens and horns are also to alert the community that an emergency, fire or rescue call is in progress and to give the public a heads up and remind them to exercise caution out on the roads or in the park playing or where ever one may be. A reminder that volunteer fireman will be in route to the firehouse and without the use of public alarms for notification it puts everyone in danger. There is nothing more risky than a town full of emergency personnel responding through the streets in a high rate of speed with blue lights on their cars and no audible alarms to notify the public. "Where are all these guys going and why aren't the sirens going off?" one resident screamed in a town that had unfortunately shut off their sirens. ( Residents, when you hear the alarms go off, please show some courtesy on the roads and give a fireman responding with a blue light to an alarm the right of way)

2) Solace: The audible alarms help those in need during an un for seen accident, fire and medical emergency. The sirens/horns send out an alert saying your call has been heard and people will be responding shortly to help. The 30 to 60 seconds of the sirens or horns sounding just might be enough to give someone the hope to hang on long enough and stay alive, to be rescued, to be saved.

3) Pagers: PAGERS WERE NOT DESIGNED TO REPLACE THE AUDIBLE ALARMS!!!!! One of the BIGGEST fallacy's and most common misconceptions the public has is " Why do you still need sirens/horns? Don't you guys have pagers now?" The truth is the pagers are only a secondary means of notification, like a backup or a bonus to the members. The pagers are not 100% reliable. They don't activate if the member wearing one hits a dead spot were no radio waves are present, the batteries can die on them, we sometimes forget them at home or in the car, and you can't hear them when you are working with loud equipment like mowing your lawn on a Saturday afternoon. What's even worse is some of the newer pagers don't even retain their computer programming half the time.

4) ISO ratings: The Insurance Services Office requires fire departments to have a certain ISO rating to maintain good fire insurance. An expectable rating is about a 3 with 10 being completely ridiculous. There is no way for a volunteer fire department to maintain a good ISO rating without the use of audible alarms and in return this affects homeowners insurance premiums. Why pay more for fire insurance?.... Residents and Departments: Is there literally a high price to pay just to silence a siren or horn to appease a complainer?...you bet there is!

5) Manpower issues: Most members work full time jobs and getting personnel to respond to a fire or rescue call can be quite difficult. It is proven that audible alarms will increase manpower response tremendously to an alarm at any hour, day or night. During those night time calls or for night time shift workers who sleep days , it is always easy to accidentally hit "Snooze" on a pager but it's hard to accidentally hit "Snooze" ( we are using snooze as a nice way to say shut it off ) on a siren or horn down the street. Sirens and horns are dependable fail safe devices that work every time. Does the public really want to risk complete tragedy that could have been prevented if only one or two crucial members of the fire department had heard that alarm? All it takes is one crucial member to not hear his or her pager, one crucial member that would have responded had there been a horn or siren sounding near by, that one crucial member could in fact have saved your life.

6) Membership: These days it seems like many departments are in need of new members. There aren't enough interested people knocking on firehouse doors inquiring to join. This seems to be the case in area's where the audible alarms have been unfortunately silenced now. If the sirens and horns are shut off and not alerting the public of emergency's you are also not alerting, motivating and inspiring new possible candidates who could very well become valuable assets to the department and the community.

7) Community Tradition/ Civil Defense: For over 70 years most communities have a 12:00 and/or 18:00 hours test of the horns or sirens. This is essential to any good community. Some people set their watches by it. One of the most common things any native Long Islander will say about the 18:00 hours test is " As a kid I always new when it was time to go home for dinner, My mom would always say be home by the 6 O' clock whistle" Another big tradition for years has been the use of the horns and sirens to notify the community of school closings do to emergency or inclement weather. As a parent, do you want to be notified of a school closing before sending your children out into possible danger? I know I would want to be notified. Sure, notification can be obtained via radio or TV sometimes but what fun is that AND what happens when your power is out eh? Sirens can activate on batter/generator back up and the horns operate on big reserve tanks of air.. So a power outage is never an issue for the audible alarms during a community emergency.

8) Fire Prevention/Community involvement: Many fire departments across the Island participate with the people in the community in a event called Operation EDITH. This stands for Exit Drill In The Home. This is part of fire prevention week and gets residents, neighbors, grandparents, parents, children and sometimes pets involved together to prepare and formulate a plan of safe escape in the event of a fire in the home. In order to do this fire prevention event the fire department sets a time for the drill and sounds the audible alarms to signal the community that the event has begun. How would a department efficiently execute this drill without the audible alarms?? Are there enough pagers for everyone in the community?? (You can find out more about Operation EDITH by asking your local fire department or searching online for "Operation EDITH".)

While there are many more, listed were just eight good reasons for the continuing use and the growing support for audible alarms in communities around Long Island. It behooves a community to realize the importance of these devices and for the complaining residents to really take a step back and think before they annoy people with their complaining. It is also important for fire departments that have shut off their audible alarms do to public complaint in the past to reconsider and re activate their alarms. Only good things can come from it. A community without a volunteer fire department public audible alarm system is not much of a community at all.

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The following departments have upgraded their audible alarm systems in the 2020s

Mineola F.D. installs new thunderbolt while new firehouse is being built and original thunderbolt is being restored (2021)

North Massapequa F.D. restores both of their Federal Model 7 sirens to have a beautiful patriotic red white & blue color (2020-2022)

Melville F.D. restores STH-10 siren at Headquarters, installs new Model 2 siren at their station 2 (2022)

Plainview F.D. now sounds their audibles for ALL calls! (2021)

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